Portfolio Construction & Financial Products with Bitcoin at the Core | Bitcoin 2026

All right. Well, good morning everyone. It's wonderful to see your beautiful faces here. I'm excited to spend the next 30 minutes on this panel with our uh distinguished panelists. Uh why don't we go ahead and kick off with some uh introductions. Drew, would you like to go first, sir? >> Yeah. Hey, everyone. Drew Patel, co-founder and CEO of Arch Lending. We provide Bitcoin back loans to individuals and institutions. >> Sam Koixberg, work on the uh Bitcoin ETF team at BlackRock. Uh, Bishop Gadera, COO at Storm Rake. We're a digital asset broker based out of Melbourne. >> And I am your moderator, Tim Savage. I, uh, run ION Strategies, which is a Bitcoin focused hedge fund. Okay. So, let's kick it off here with you, Sam. Um, you educate advisors and institutions on the unique aspects of Bitcoin. You you've been in Bitcoin for um, at least a decade now, so very very knowledgeable. Uh can you walk us through how far we've come uh since Black Rockck launched its ETF in the last couple years? What's changed and and how's it opened new doors? >> Yeah, thank you. And uh thank you Bitcoin 2026 for having us here. Um a lot has changed over the last two years. I think what I'm most proud of and the firm's most proud of is you know we meet investors where they're at. Uh there are many financial intermediaries that wouldn't want uh the responsibility of a bearer asset. Uh and so to be able to deliver them access to Bitcoin in a uh liquid ETF wrapper that they're comfortable with and familiar with uh has unlocked a tremendous amount of doors. The ETF now is uh upwards of $60 billion. Um over the last two years, a tremendous amount has changed. Uh the misconception is that when the SEC approves an ETF, it is now approved everywhere for everyone. But that's not the case in the wealth management industry. So when we launched this in uh January 2024, it was basically blocked everywhere, every wire, every independent and even some major RAAS. So then you get to work. Uh you work with the home office due diligence teams at these various firms. Uh walk through the ETF structure, walk through what is Bitcoin. They have to go through their due diligence process. And you basically go from fully blocked to them allowing their clients to ask for Bitcoin to advisers being able to talk about Bitcoin to their clients but still needing their permission to then advisers being able to invest on behalf of their clients in a discretionary manner to then home offices saying we think you should allocate X percentage and then the final boss is the home offices these various wealth managers actually putting it into their home office model. And earlier this month, we saw the first major wealth manager add IBIT at a 2% allocation to their home office ETF model, which was significant. So, we've made a lot of progress, but even today, we've still got a long, long way to go. Uh, wealth managers in the US only make up 20% of IBIT flows, which is only 12 billion. Uh and so we're excited uh to continue to invest uh in that education and propagating uh Bitcoin to uh to the wealth management industry. >> Well, that's that's been amazing to see all of the progress especially since 2024. It it was a very noticeable marked shift in the industry uh just going mainstream across traditional finance and been really pleased to see the progress so far. Uh pivoting to you Drew. Uh so in just a short span of time, we've seen Bitcoin shift from being pushed away from traditional finance and and uh financial service providers to now it's it's being adopted and and collateralized by some of the most respected financial institutions in the world. Tell us about your typical clients who are using Bitcoin as collateral and how you go go about structuring products and uh and how how it benefits them. Yeah. So we we service a range of clients from individuals to institutions. On the individual side, the use cases range. Many people borrow to make other investments, buy a house, um or diversify into other assets that they are interested in. Many folks are also using it to handle life expenses that come up, whether it's a medical bill, a tax bill, and um there's a general segment of people that are also just living off their Bitcoin. And so they're using it for their day-to-day lifestyle. On the institutional side, we service small to medium businesses throughout the US that have Bitcoin on their balance sheet as well as publicly listed miners, treasury companies, and those use cases are are very different. Many of them are borrowing to either fund um expansion for their businesses or to cover payroll um or other expenses that come up. So I would say those are more all for just benefiting the the corporate expansion plans that they have or growth plans or to cover any cyclical shortfalls that arise. And Bisher you Australia is your home and you've ran a incredibly successful FX company and congratulations on your new launch yesterday in Dallas uh expanding into the US. uh with your background in traditional FX bro bro bro bro bro bro bro bro bro bro bro bro bro bro bro bro bro bro bro bro brokerage how are Australian investors and by extension now US investors h how are they treating Bitcoin in their portfolios um and compared to more the traditional FX side of things? >> Yeah, it's a fantastic question because we've seen in America here your markets for Bitcoin are far more developed. your digital asset acceptance is far more ahead than you know where Australia is at. Uh I I like to say that the Australian laid-back attitude kind of works against us in that way, but it's still you know we see in here you've got so many different ways that people access Bitcoin. We we see of course we got ETFs, there's people who are uh employing it through mining in employing it through derivatives markets. uh whereas within Australia it's almost just seen as a speculative asset. Uh only just recently uh as of April 1st did we pass our own digital asset framework bill which is our equivalent of what the Americans would be looking for for the clarity act to be passed. uh it's it's we were up until that point we were an unregulated asset class so it made transacting in the space extremely difficult and it made Australian banks so I think if you guys remember a few years ago there was operation choke point which made transferring from your uh your bank your institution extremely difficult to come across into a bitcoin platform or a crypto platform we've been experiencing that we had over $9 million worth of deposits blocked in the first quarter quarter of 2026. So there's still a long way to go before Bitcoin in Australia is as mainstream and as accepted as here in America. Uh we'd love to see that really bridge that gap. And that's why we've started our operation in Dallas just yesterday is because you got to come to the epicenter of where finance and capital markets are moving towards and that's definitely here in America. Uh foreign exchange markets are adapting rapidly because of stable coins. Uh, I'm being cognizant that I'm at a Bitcoin conference, so I'm not going to pivot the conversation to stable coins, but they're really interesting layer that's being added in there. And seeing Bitcoin as a base money that people can settle towards, you know, is fantastic to see as well. But yeah, would love to see the Aussies step up their game and start investing as bullish and as aggressively as the Americans are doing at the moment. That'd be great. >> I'd love to see it, too. you know, even five, especially even 10 years ago to sit here and uh sit there and think of all the different ways Bitcoin would be adopted, collateralized, built into traditional financial infrastructure would have been um kind of a dream. I mean, it's mindboggling to see the progress and how fast the adoption is occurring. Uh Sam, you and I even this morning at breakfast were talking about IBIT and uh allocations and and the adoption. Um with IBIT being one of the most successful ETFs and and Bitcoin vehicles, what you mentioned 2%, but do you see a greater appetite for larger allocations? Um and and what is kind of that timeline for getting more and more Bitcoin exposure for uh the mainstream portfolio? Yeah, it's a great question. We're working hard. Uh I I think one of the reasons why IBIT was so successful was because the ETF brand at BlackRock has decades worth of building trust with financial intermediaries. Uh they know us for our S&P 500 ETFs and our bond ETFs. And so we start with education. And I'm sure everybody on this screen and even in this room, you start with education. you start with the fundamentals because we know how volatile Bitcoin can be. Without the conviction, you're going to have a very uh challenged behavioral investing experience. And so we spent a lot of time uh working with financial intermediaries, financial adviserss, home offices on Bitcoin and blockchain fundamentals. Our deck shows a 2% allocation to Bitcoin from a 6040 rebalanced quarterly and over the last 10 years that added about 200 basis points of total return but it kept the risk profile the same. So many wealth advisers when they're managing money on behalf of clients they do a wealth uh plan, they do questionnaires and they find one of the five, six or seven risk profiles that the client is at um and then they allocate there. So for us to be able to help them to add Bitcoin without changing the risk profile is a significant thing whether it's for an institution with a very specific investment policy statement or you know a small business owner sitting in Atlanta, Georgia. Um what I'm encouraged by is that the home offices that two years ago uh at these wealth managers were hesitant to add IBIT, they now are showing you know uh recommendations of 1 to 4%. Uh which to financial adviserss coming off zero is actually a big deal. Um and again you know our ETF now 60 billion uh 12 billion of that is with the wealth management industry and industry is 30 trillion plus dollars and 12 billion only in the ETF. So uh we're continuing to invest in them. We're continuing to invest in the education. Uh, and I think if we can get most investors off zero, which we're not there yet, um, and continue to bring these home offices along that adoption curve, which the ETFs, all ETFs are still blocked at some of these major firms, that's going to happen with time. Um, and the adoption is really onedirectional. No one has adopted it to or approved it to a certain point and has gone backwards. Everything's moving in this adoption and approval direction. So that all those things are encouraging and other firms are doing great work and educating in the space as well. >> That's amazing. Well, my inner Bitcoin maxi um you know within two years I'm hoping that black rock will recommend a 90% allocation. So, um, okay. So, Drew, um, can you walk us through how at Arch Lending you guys are looking at, um, you know, your client's ability to borrow and, uh, and collateralize their Bitcoin and and how do your interest as a company align with theirs? Uh, and again, kind of walking through those mechanics of if you actually wanted to, you know, collateralize your Bitcoin, what does that look like? >> Yeah. So I think um credit really legitimizes any sort of asset and if you look at it when people own homes or stocks and you need to tap into additional liquidity you're able to take out a heliloc or borrow against those stocks and this is really enabling people to do the same thing with Bitcoin. So what it allows you to do is use that as collateral borrow against it at whatever percentage you feel comfortable. We allow certain LTV thresholds, but that enables people to get liquidity for a variety of reasons that I mentioned earlier, but continue to benefit from the upside of Bitcoin because as they pay off their loan, they receive their Bitcoin back. And so that was really the biggest unlock is allowing people to maintain appreciation and um sort of maintain the benefit of the ownership of Bitcoin that they've accumulated but continue to access cash as people need just given lifestyle changes that come up and and really just live the day-to-day life that they want. And just to follow up on that as well, with the recent presidential administration's kind of directive to allow for Bitcoin to be an official collateralized asset, have you seen that catalyze your own uh clientele and and their desire to to use Bitcoin as collateral? >> Yeah, I think it's twofold. We work with um clients directly as well as many wealth managers and RAAS throughout the country. And so as people like Sam are doing, you know, the good work on the educational side and more and more individuals and businesses have their allocations go from zero to something meaningful, naturally the need arises to access cash as as more and more of your wealth is in an asset like Bitcoin. And so all of that is a catalyst that we're seeing. One is, you know, the the price of Bitcoin going up and and more people having um larger amounts of wealth in there as well as further adoption creating the need for lending products around it. >> Welcome to predict. The world is a market. Everything is a market. Every headline moves the line. Every moment is your market. Call the moves. Bet on your instinct, your prediction, your edge. Dual bits. Predict where everything is a market. >> Okay. So, Bisher, again, tapping into the the US operations. Um, you did touch in on this just a few minutes ago, but what kind of lessons uh are you taking from back home as you grow and expand into the US? uh and and do you think that's going to be a different perspective given a different set of compliance and regulations and just regulatory environment compared to back home? >> Yeah, one thing I've been noticing particularly here in America is that it's a very much a relationshipdriven economy and back home in Australia, you know, people don't like being sold to. You know, they want to be able to just be able to make their own decisions. They don't want to hear out a pitch. They don't want to see what Bitcoin can do for them. They want to be justified in coming to the market themselves. Whereas here in America, the people are willing to listen, are willing to come out and hear you out and give you 30 seconds of their time in order to see what that what Bitcoin can do for their portfolio. So, it's been really interesting seeing that transition coming over here. More importantly, you know, the US market, it's it's so competitive. Like when it when you go out in Australia, there's probably three or four operators that you're really going up against any one time. Whereas here it's just it's a super saturated market and that actually just benefits the end investor, the end consumer, the end user because they've got so many options as to how they can express their position, how they can manage their Bitcoin wealth, how they can access Bitcoin in the first place. It just makes the whole standard lift to a much higher level. And I think that over time, anybody who can be able to thrive in America and be able to provide really good access to Bitcoin, whether it be via services, via ETFs, via lending, via spot access, whatever that may be, those businesses are going to be, you know, and you hear this phrase a lot, the future of finance, but they're going to be the more competitive players moving forward within the financial markets because, you know, you see powerhouse names like Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, they got started as you know small trading shops that had a niche had an edge that they were able to take advantage of and then they have become these massive monolithic institutions that you know have dominated global finance for the last 50 years but they didn't start there and that's where I believe a lot of the players whether it be ourselves or you know many of the other companies that are here today they're the ones that are going to be powering ahead and going to be the major global financial players moving forward as Bitcoin absorbs more and more capital from that you available pool of allocation because you compare it to say for example the global bond market sitting at 300 trillion or the US debt market sitting at 100 trillion. The amount of capital that flows through there is substantial and I I imagine that Bitcoin as a settlement layer will eventually have more money markets move away move over to Bitcoin. Uh and that way you know you see a lot of in interesting products being issued out whether that be stretch strike strife and stride all these preferred equity options. Uh, and then you've got, of course, the direct investments that can really help bolster people's portfolios. But that that was what I would like to see over the next couple of years, especially competing here in America, is seeing American native firms start to take Bitcoin and make it a genuine global powerhouse asset that should empower a lot of people along the way. >> Yeah, that's amazing. And yeah, it's interesting to see the the competition because on one hand, everyone wants Bitcoin to thrive here and and we want to grow the um grow the pie. Uh Sam, going a little bit off script. Uh you know, Black Rockck's products have the Bitcoin products have been the most successful um among the recent products that have been launched and and some of the most successful ETFs that Black Rockck has ever launched. Do you see uh other products coming online as as competition um or is it healthy to have multiple options other selections available to consumers? >> I think I think it's extremely healthy. I think that what you know meritocracy makes you know our market makes capitalism and you know even on this stage we are all meeting investors where they are on their specific journeys with their specific needs. Right? Bisher might be a better phone call, right, for certain clients. And Drew, they, you know, he he is meeting specific needs. So, I think the more competition the better. And we love obviously to compete. Um, and that's just going to make everybody better, grow the pie. Um, because we're just so when it comes to the average financial intermediaries knowledge of the fundamentals, uh, it is, um, we need as many hands lifting and they want it. They want they want people to come in to B like Bishop said they they're open to the ideas they're getting asked by their clients, right? You know, I bid or Bitcoin's price is on CNBC four times an hour, right? So the third time that the financial adviser gets a phone call from a client saying, "What about Bitcoin?" They need someone to call. We hope it's Black Rockck, but there are many others that are qualified to pick up the phone and give them answers on what is it. So the more competition uh the more innovation the better. >> Wonderful. Okay. Well, in our last few minutes here, I just want to go down the line. Starting with you, Drew. Um looking forward, what is one thing that you're really excited about that you think is going to push Bitcoin to new levels, new levels of adoption, new price levels? What's exciting you? Yeah, I think for us, um, one of the things we're focused on is really meeting our clients where they are and developing tailored use cases for them when it comes to their liquidity needs. And that ranges whether you're an individual or an institution. If you're an institution, maybe you want more option strategies associated with your loan. So, caller loan type of profiles um, as well as hedging strategies. If you're an individual, we have some products that are tailor built towards specific use cases. So maybe some people are able to borrow and use those borrowed proceeds to buy mining equipment and now replicate a sort of income stream in Bitcoin. Some people are able to maybe borrow um perpetually. And what we do is develop a strategy where you borrow conservatively against your Bitcoin. and you can use that every year to emulate another income stream if you're retired or don't have a strong W2 and continue through more of these tailored use cases combining Bitcoin with real estate and other asset classes so that um it really meets all of our clients needs where they are and that's really our main focus. >> Same question to you Bisher. Um you know what is one thing that's exciting to you that you think is going to help push Bitcoin to that next level? Yeah, it's it'll be a two-pronged approach. One will be the regulatory clarity. Um, even for example, there was a wonderful breakfast this morning talking about the deminimous tax exemption on Bitcoin. So that way it can be utilized as a currency and that, you know, buying a cup of coffee in the morning doesn't trigger a tax event. That would be huge. So I know that there's a lot of talk about applying a deminimous tax exemption on stable coins for example because they, you know, are intending to hold their value and peg it against the USD. But I think that if we can apply that same framework to Bitcoin and we can stick stay true to the original white paper where it's a peer-to-peer electronic cash, I think that's going to drive it both on the adoption side and on the regulatory side. Whether that be the deminimous tax exemption, whether that be the clarity act coming in later on and then that will then drive adoption both for the institutions that will come in from clarity. They'll be able to size their investments in a much more meaningful manner. And then just for the everyday individual in the street having that kind of ability to know how their taxes are going to be treated when they're using their Bitcoin should drive the adoption significantly higher and drive the network usage up and up and up. Therefore, our Bitcoin miners are going to feel a little bit more inclined to, you know, allocate their computing power towards uh Bitcoin mining and, you know, we because obviously the AI data centers are going to be a competing interest as well. And so that I feel is a very positive reflexive loop that should be coming in within the next 3 to 6 months. you get that deminimous tax exemption feeding into regulatory clarity feeding into adoption uh which then drives up the network usage and makes the minor fees a bit more attractive. I think that's what I'm expecting over the next six months that'll be very positive. >> Yeah, you're speaking my language man. Um yeah, that deminimus again we were chatting about this morning that that is a huge unlock. I mean as soon as you can start getting that medium of exchange really proliferating it's it's absolutely huge. Sam, same question to you. Yeah, I I so I think further education I mean every day the largest asset manager in the world is working with financial intermediaries to educate across all asset classes but that includes Bitcoin. Uh I think one of the things that we're most proud of is you know we are down 35% or so from the highs uh in October. We've seen $2.7 billion net come into the ETF in a down market. That doesn't happen, right? When markets are down, flows are negative. So to be in a bare market with an ETF that's trading $2 billion a day on a penny or two bit ass spread, which is similar to a stock in the Dow, you know, to have the options market now thriving and growing around the ETF, which is again known to many of the professional investors, that opens the door for more things that we can do. we can deliver more defined outcomes for various investors and we filed for an ETF uh that will launch later this year and if you are creating defined outcomes with Bitcoin as the base layer that is just going to encourage more and more traditional investors who tend to be wealthier and older to at least consider okay what is the underlying that is driving this in this this very attractive outcome and so uh we're excited for the growth growth of the options, growth of the liquidity, uh growth of the adoption curve across wealth managers, uh across institutions. I mean, we have 13F filings that we check quarterly. We can see who's using it. Um we're excited for new entrance to come to the market and bring, you know, new ideas. Um, but ultimately I I think that uh just continuing to educate on what it is, seeing the growth, uh, liquidity begets liquidity and um, you know, we're excited to continue to build in this market. >> Yeah, really exciting to to hear. Well, just personally, um, yeah, I think we live in an interesting time in the world where there's a lot of, uh, volatility, a lot of uncertainty. Um, and I think as Bitcoin continues to get adopted, my my hope, something that excites me is uh the idea that the general population gains a stronger understanding of history and and monetary economics, mechanics, and I think Bitcoin has that to offer. Everyone here in this room is probably wellversed in this already, otherwise you might not be here. Um but for the general person to gain an understanding of where we are at monetarily in the world um I I think that education is very powerful. So I I hope to see that continue to proliferate. Okay. Well, we are out of time. Thank you gentlemen for your uh your time and and being on this panel with me and uh thank you everyone in the audience. Thank you Tim. Every year this community comes together to celebrate, to debate, to build what comes next. And every year the stage gets bigger. Sound money center stage. So where do you go to celebrate the next chapter in Bitcoin history? You come home. Nashville. July 2027.